If you missed the first part, here’s an overview: I had a test date with a blog reader, “Jack”, who took me up on my offer to do a phone chat and message exchange then give him feedback on where he might be going wrong. It was also a challenge for me. I am prone to avoiding constructive critique because I’m a rampant people-pleaser who never wants to upset anybody. Would I be able to tell Jack where he was going wrong without burying anything useful in a torrent of consoling positivity? Let’s see, shall we?
Accidental ghosting
Full disclosure: in the run-up to my test date with Jack, I drop the ball spectacularly. Thanks to too much desk work and time on my phone, I have a dodgy shoulder which makes it agony to type. The last few messages in our pre-date thread are all from him, and they’re fun/nice/question-asking ones to which I’d like to reply in depth. But I’m injured, and traveling, so when I do get the chance to sit at a proper desk I have to prioritise work. Jack’s thread slips down my inbox. I send a couple of holding messages (‘sorry, I’m a bit fucked/busy at the mo, will get back to you tomorrow or the next day!’) then fail to meet my self-imposed deadlines. Huge apologies, Jack. This is genuinely crap of me and you should deduct points from my own score, if you’re keeping one.
Jack’s response to me being a disorganised, underdelivering prick is to send a couple of gentle messages. He gets the balance just right – he’s not nagging, just reminding me that I’ve agreed to do this, which is welcome. However, I later discover that he thought I had ghosted him, which is broadly reminiscent of what men on dating sites often think about me too. I can leave messages or matches for days sometimes, if I’m too busy/ill/injured or just not in the mood to reply. To me, dating is meant to be fun, so I’d rather take my time and send something decent than hurriedly bash out a shit answer. Quality over speed. In fact, if I’m excited about a match, it’ll take longer for me to reply because I want to compose something honest, fun and open, with suitable questions about the things I’m curious to know. Men get annoyed with this sometimes – a guy once sent me a ‘ghost’ emoji because I hadn’t replied to his previous message within 24 hours. Lol.
When we discussed this piece afterwards, Jack wanted me to make clear that men do often get ghosted on dating sites, so it’s not an outrageous assumption for him to make. I definitely understand this and am happy to acknowledge it – that’s partly why I wanted to explain my thinking in these paragraphs. I get it, dating sucks for straight men and you get ghosted a lot, I’m trying to urge you not to take it personally. I hope that men can extend the same understanding to me (and other straight women) and see that ghosting (or taking ages to reply) is something we inevitably end up doing pretty often, because the numbers on dating apps are so skewed. It’s not personal. It is, in fact, the opposite of that.
I hadn’t ghosted Jack though, I was genuinely injured and busy. So eventually, instead of repeatedly promising (then failing) to message, I just set a time for the call. And as I said in part one, the call itself was fun. We had a good time and Jack seems like a decent person with fun hobbies and a nerdy job that I find fascinating because I am also a bit of a nerd. He told me cool secrets about things from his industry that I didn’t know, which I enjoyed immensely.
So far the only things I can think to critique are the fact that he calls my charm intimidating (I don’t want my good points to be things men are frightened of!), and the fact that he’s been a bit negative in his pre-date messaging (it feels a little like he’s going through the motions). But the date itself is fun, so what exactly is the issue?
Then afterwards, Jack asks if I’d like to see his notes on our exchange (I would!) and when I read those something clicks inside my head. His emailed notes are essentially a running commentary of how well (or badly) he thinks he is doing at each stage of our interaction, and they are deeply and powerfully unkind.
To himself, not to me.
Competition not collaboration
Jack notes how good my profile is, then immediately compares it to his own, saying mine is better than anything he’s ever written about himself (of course it is, I’m a professional writer!). This is another example of that ‘competitive rather than collaborative’ thing I mentioned in part one of this post – the false idea that the better I am, the worse that reflects on the guys I am dating.
I am especially grateful to Jack for having this test date with me now, because I don’t think I’ve ever articulated this on the blog before, or even really understood the shape of it myself. It is a problem that has come up a lot in my life.
- The boyfriend who once told me, “you know, I’ve always been jealous of how well you command a room.”
- The one who refused to admit that I was funny, because funny was ‘his thing’ – as if somehow that couldn’t be a quality both of us had in common.
- The guys who’ve been explicit about their discomfort that I might earn more money than them (not a problem in recent years, I make less than minimum wage these days – you’re welcome, dudes!)
- The many men who have told me I’m ‘intimidating’ because of my sexual experience. Or my charm. Or intelligence, or whatever it might be.
This issue deserves a blog post of its own – I don’t want to pour all my bitterness out on to Jack. He’s doing something many men have done before, and his version is far less hurtful than the ones that came from guys who knew me well. But it’s worth pointing out that this way of viewing relationships isn’t just a barrier to dating in the first place, it can be actively damaging to the self-esteem of whoever you date. I know so many women who have been encouraged by boyfriends to make themselves smaller and quieter. Appear less intelligent or funny or charming, lest the way we’re being somehow triggers insecurity in nearby men.
To me, the biggest green flag you can wave in any relationship is to recognise the shiny qualities of the person you’re with, and bask in the light that they cast upon you.
- My girlfriend is so funny, she has me in stitches!
- My wife is such an absolute boss – she presented at a massive conference the other day, I could never have done something so powerful!
- My partner is infinitely better than I am at [thing], I feel so very lucky to be with them!
See what I mean? Good qualities are not a zero-sum game. It’s important to recognise that one of the amazing things about the people who love us (or, if we’re dating, the people who might potentially love us) is the way they add to our lives – sometimes with things that we couldn’t do ourselves. You’re meant to be a team, after all. Try not to see someone’s good points as things with which to compete: they’re shining beacons that cast a light which will make your own life brighter!
Jack assures me that if he’d actually matched with me on a site, he’d have felt exactly like this, but the fact that I was doing this as a test made it trickier to lean in to that feeling.
This is a warm up to my main point here, though, which is this…
Love yourself
In Jack’s notes about our test date, he uses aggressively negative language about himself in almost every single comment. Needy, whiney, weird, boring, cringe, twat. None of which, incidentally, are judgments I would agree with.
I’m quite shocked to learn that every time I gave him gentle feedback (ask me questions!) or failed to reply to a message on time, he’d immediately and heavily berate himself. It upsets me, to be honest, as someone who is trying very hard to be nice while balancing that with requested, constructive feedback. It hands me way too much responsibility and raises the stakes of even a test date way higher than I’m comfortable with – especially given how scatty/injured and slow I am to reply.
I don’t want to be harsh here: I get it. As I said in the first post, it’s hard to put yourself out there and say ‘this is who I am, do you like me?’ so I can see why sometimes pre-empting rejection by beating oneself up might make true rejection sting less. But there’s a more important truth at the heart of this, and it’s one that I personally learned from women’s magazines, sex and relationships books/blogs, supportive friends, and above all therapy: you cannot love another until you love yourself.
Cheesy? Yes! Strap in cos we’re gonna get more so.
Love who you are
If you’re looking for a partner, ideally you want to find one who loves you for who you are, right? Your nerdiness should be something they delight in. Your personality – shy or ‘weird’ or ‘cringe’ or otherwise – should be something that presses their buttons. If you wanna be loved, you need to get to grips with the things about you that are lovable. Find them, explore them, understand them, and celebrate them.
I’m not here to tell you that you have to be a certain way in order to be worthy of love: confident if you’re shy, ‘cool’ if you’re instinctively nerdy. It was strange to me that Jack beat himself up in his notes so much for being ‘nerdy’ or not wanting to bore me with ‘weird’ and ‘geeky’ shit. I LOVE NERDS. The question is… why don’t you?
I’d never tell Jack (or anyone) that if you want to date you should pretend to be someone you’re not. I’m not a pick-up artist and that’s never been the goal. The people who tell you to be cooler and more confident, who’ll teach you tricks and lines to get the girl… they are charlatans. They weave silly illusions to make you believe in their magic, but it’s actually all a mirage. It requires you to become a certain type of person, regardless of whether that’s who you actually are. It feeds into this idea that only certain types of people can ever attain love, or are worthy of it, and that’s bullshit. You deserve to be loved, my friends: geek, nerd, weirdo, whatever. You deserve to be loved for who you are, not for a character you’ve been encouraged to play once you’ve battered all the uniqueness out of your precious weird self.
It’s obviously cheesy, and it sounds so very basic, but before you launch into dating, you really do need to love yourself first. Become comfortable with who you are – the body you live in, the hobbies you enjoy, the passions you want to wax lyrical about. Every single one of us has a limited, niche appeal. We should never try to appeal to everyone, but instead aim to understand what makes us excellent so we can work out how to find the right people – ones who’ll recognise that too.
Love yourself first. Please. You deserve it.
Loving yourself is not easy
As I say, this is cheesy, and it probably sounds very basic. I don’t care. Basic it may be, but easy it ain’t. I’ll be honest, even as a charming, funny sex blogger, I still wake up some mornings wishing I could be anyone but myself. I go through periods where the very idea of writing a dating profile feels like pulling teeth: how can I sing my own praises to an audience of strangers when I can barely look in the mirror without wincing? At those times, I don’t date. Or realistically, I sometimes date anyway but then friends help me recognise that I may not be in a great headspace for it, so I step back in deference to their wise advice.
Here’s what I do instead:
I hang out with my friends and family. I go to gigs and parties and the pub. I plan silly little trips that make me happy. I get therapy, or read books and articles that help me with my self-esteem. I focus on my hobbies and passions and work. I spend quality time with myself, understanding the shape of who I am and how I fit into the world. I affirm the things about myself that are good, and take note of the things I’d like to work on. I introspect about the qualities I genuinely enjoy about my personality or my body or whatever and I work really hard to turn self-hatred into self-love, or at the very least self-acceptance. I force myself to remember that I should only be dating when I know for a fact that I can meet a rejection with a shrug and ‘their loss!’ rather than taking it as a damning critique of who I am. ‘Oh you don’t like me? That’s cool! Thanks for letting me know (or ghosting) so I can move on to someone who’s hot for what I’m offering.’
I reckon ‘taking a sex blogger up on the offer of a test date’ would fall squarely into the remit of something to do before dating, to get yourself to a place where you feel truly ready. So well done to Jack on this, big points there.
I can’t test date everyone, though, so if you feel like you’re in a similar position and you don’t have friends to talk to or the money/time for therapy, reading blogs like Dr Nerdlove can be helpful (I rate his thoughtful advice) or working through resources on self esteem. I know I bang on about it often but that’s because it’s awesome: Bish’s website, though aimed at young people, gives a tonne of advice that many many adults (myself included) could have done with learning when they were young. Here are a few starting points:
Before you go on any dates, or even set up your profile, you should have a good understanding of what you bring to the table. You’re not looking to win a prize that will turn your life from ‘bad’ into ‘brilliant’, ideally you’re dating because you’ve come to the conclusion that you’re awesome enough to spark joy for a stranger, and you’re curious about the joy they might bring you in return.
If you don’t spark joy in yourself, fix that first.
Conclusion: LOVE YOURSELF
I have no idea if this advice is helpful for Jack (I will send this to him before publication), nor do I know if I’ve achieved my own goal: could I give critique without drowning it in positivity? I’m not sure. The takeaway for Jack is pretty positive, for sure. He’s a kind, personable, nerdy guy who could maybe tweak his messaging style a little to make sure he’s showing that off to potential new matches. But he’s eminently dateable and (unlike him) I don’t think he’s a weirdo or a twat. If he were one of my close friends, I’d be nudging him towards resources like those mentioned above, maybe dispensing kind words and asking him to internalise them. I’d encourage him to be gentle with himself, to stop seeing ‘Jack’ as a problem to be solved or an unlovable inconvenience, and instead recognise that he’s very worthy of love. Not just for his sake, but for those he’s dating too.
Self-hate gets in the way of connection on a date: it’s hard to build rapport with someone over who they truly are if ‘who they truly are’ is something of which they’re ashamed. It can lead to resentment, too: if you hate yourself enough then anyone who matches with you will immediately be a source of suspicion. Why do they like me!? I’m shit! Oh no WONDER they haven’t replied within 24 hours, it’s because I’m a terrible arsehole and they despise me! It also means you’re primed to see dating as a competition, one where you need to be better than the person you’re with, to prove your worth, rather than allowing yourself to bask in the feeling that this cool person’s chosen you.
Important to note, too, that self-hate immediately introduces a power imbalance into dating: you’ve put yourself in a deferential position which allows someone to treat you badly without accountability. I fucked up and was slow in my messages, Jack assumed I had ghosted him, and rather than think ‘ugh, this woman is such a flaky prick’ (which would be extremely legit) he instead took all that on himself. Beating himself up for not being good enough, when actually it was my mistake. In doing that, he made me (a complete stranger) the guardian of his fractured self-esteem, when I was far from worthy of having that immense responsibility. He deserves better.
Fundamentally, if I were to distill this advice into a handy little snippet for you to use on social media when you share this post [HINT HINT] it would be this:
Love yourself before you start dating.
You will know you’re ready to date when you can accept rejection with a shrug and say ‘your loss!’. It ain’t easy, I know. I fail often. But remembering this as the goal can help us date in ways that are fun, open, equal and which give adequate weight to our own health and happiness.
Jack did really well here, and I hope you’re as grateful to him as I am for being willing to embark on this test date/journey with me. I have learned some things that will help me in my own dating life, and I know some of you will find this useful as well. On our actual date Jack was chatty, nerdy and vulnerable – I love all of those things! I hope that in the future he can love them a little more too.
Epilogue: Jack and I had a long debrief on the phone after he read these two posts, where he gave some input and opinions on it (which I’ve tried to reflect where necessary). He was pleased with how it went and genuinely quite surprised and delighted that I thought he was nice. As a result of the conversations we’ve had, and these blog posts, he’s re-starting therapy. I am so pleased for him and I wish him all the very best on that journey.
5 Comments
Hiya, the line about using aggressively negative language about yourself really struck a chord. I’ve absolutely been guilty of doing precisely that for many years (low self esteem etc) and the thing that really opened my eyes was when someone said to me “imagine how you would react if you heard someone talking about one of your friends the way you talk about yourself. You’d be furious, right? You’d leap to their defence”. And they were right! I would! Without hesitation!
It doesn’t mean I don’t still do it, sometimes, but it absolutely changed the way I think about doing it.
This is such a good way to frame it! My friends and I occasionally throw out a “don’t talk about my mate that way!” if someone is being really down on themselves too.
I’m a bit emotional tbh! I expected this second part to reveal something sinister, but in reality, ‘Jack’ is sound. I’m personally pessimistic about the impact this will have on his dating life, but the validation is vital – and that he’s getting back into therapy is fantastic. I’m rooting for him!
This post (and a few others) are really pertinent for me at the minute. Long story short, I got fucking dumped didn’t I? Out of the blue, by text, caught feelings, was having a crisis about compatibility because she was so excellent and I felt really good with her. So, this week, it’s been quite the menty b.
I’m struggling, in part because I do the negative self talk all the time like Jack and I’m trying not to. My relationship to dating has been shit for all my life tbh, and I so want to change it. I am always in the type of situations where I do a Jack: Nothing wrong, but beat yourself up that nothing goes right. My therapist is likely fed up with hearing it all tbh.
You are worthy of more than minimum wage, as a writer and a person imo. I am also a professional writer, and I say you are more engaging than me who has got himself into a somewhat lucrative position. Question is: what do both you and Jack think all your help and support will do for his love life?
I know I said I would “keep my thoughts to myself this time”, but I kinda felt the need to to follow up with something more constructive after my kneejerk reaction to the first installment of this pair of articles.
I say this through clenched teeth and fighting against every fiber in my being – this is good advice.
Now, I will briefly explain why this is such a struggle for me: I find the concept of self-love entirely alien to my nature. I know, rationally, that it’s healthier to be holding a positive view of oneself before expecting a potential partner to be able to do the same. Unfortunately, everything about me resists that logic. It ultimately just comes far more naturally to me to find myself an unending disappointment, both to myself and to others. Like my aversion to confidence, which my brain automatically associates with arrogance, I seem to immediately conflate self-love with narcissism – so both of which I find I instinctively recoil from.
But ultimately my disposition doesn’t change that this is positive guidance. Constant self-deprecation is, I have found, not an especially attractive trait, even if couched in a jokey tone (and worse if it’s not). The less of that kind of self-talk the better, if one can avoid it. At the age of 50, with an entire lifetime of regret and disappointment behind me, I expect I’ve passed the event horizon for correcting course.
My hope for Jack is he makes a better go of it than I have.
Thank you for sharing this journey and for your patience. I wish you, as always, a
Good Journey
I’ve had many relationships – friendships, flirtations, all sorts – with people who have crushingly low self esteem. they can be so cruel to themselves, and it gets very hard to keep shouting louder than the voice in their head – but if you give up, they take it as confirmation that they really were that terrible all along. phew. it’s a mess. i’m so so glad that jack was receptive to your feedback, and hope we get to hear more from him further down the line. he sounds like good company.